Community Newspapers Fold Up Some Operations

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Los Angeles Times Media Group is making cutbacks at its portfolio of small community newspapers, including closing offices and consolidating staff in its downtown L.A. headquarters.

With a shift toward its online product, the Times has also cut the number of publishing days at several community papers, including the widely read Glendale News-Press.

“It’s a huge loss,” said Judee Kendall, chief executive at the Glendale Chamber of Commerce and former publisher of the Times’ community newspapers. “I know the people who read the News-Press and they still like to hold the paper.”

Of course, the newspaper industry has been struggling for years with a decline in advertising. In the first half of this year alone, print ad dollars at newspapers nationwide fell by $798 million, or 8 percent, from last year, according to the Newspaper Association of America.

Other local papers have been trimming, too. The Los Angeles Newspaper Group, which includes the Los Angeles Daily News, the Pasadena Star News and Long Beach Press-Telegram, has reportedly cut salaries and laid off employees in recent years.

More recently, it has attempted to boost ad revenue by shifting to a so-called digital-first strategy, whereby priorities for writing breaking news and selling ads are shifted toward the Web.

The Times also hopes that by emphasizing the online product, the community papers can stabilize readership and grow digital ad revenue.

However, analysts said that print ads on the whole are still far more lucrative than their digital counterparts.

Diminishing returns

The Times owns seven local papers through a division called Times Community News. The papers, four in Los Angeles County and three in Orange County, are free and the company generates revenue through ad sales.

Total weekly circulation for the L.A. papers ranges from about 6,800 copies on the low end for the La Canada Valley Sun to about 57,000 copies on the high end for the Glendale News-Press, according to a document for advertisers.

Many of the papers, which are bundled with the main Los Angeles Times paper, publish only a few times a week, but some are nearly daily. The Glendale paper, for instance, until recently had come out six days a week; it now comes out five.

A number of papers around the country have resorted to cutting the number of print days, most notably the New Orleans Times-Picayune, which went from a daily schedule to three times per week earlier this year and made New Orleans the largest U.S. metro area without a daily paper. Though such a change can save on costs, it can also backfire: New Orleans residents were angered over the Times-Picayune’s move and many switched subscriptions to the Baton Rouge daily newspaper, which moved into New Orleans.

Some L.A.-area readers are also upset.

“The News-Press was the voice of Glendale for many years,” said Bill Boyd, senior managing director at real estate services firm Charles Dunn Co. in Glendale who said he’s been a reader of the paper since the 1970s. “It sort of got deemphasized as time went on.”

But it’s more than just Glendale’s paper getting cut.

Residents of Burbank will no longer have Sunday delivery of their community paper; instead, the Burbank Leader is now delivered only on Wednesday and Saturday. The La Canada Valley Sun, too, is losing its Sunday edition, becoming a one-day-a-week paper.

The community newspaper group also includes Orange County titles such as the Huntington Beach Independent and Laguna Beach Coastline Pilot, which recently have undergone similar changes to the L.A. papers.

The Times acquired many of the papers in deals during the ’90s and last decade, with the idea of using their existing staffs to handle some of the Times workflow, while also giving the paper better penetration in the area.

In recent years, though, staffs have shrunk considerably under Times ownership. Kendall, who oversaw the community papers from 1987 through 2001, said there was a staff of hundreds dedicated solely to them during her tenure. The papers’ masthead now lists only about 60 names, many of whom share responsibilities at more than one paper.

“It’s very scaled down from when I was there,” she said.

As part of the recent changes, the Times is moving the Los Angeles County papers’ staffs to its downtown office.

The Times declined to comment on staffing levels.

Digital dollars

The paper is making these moves in part because it is confident that digital products will be a big part of the community papers’ future. Already, there are blogs on the community papers’ sites such as the 818 Now and 626 Now that post short news items targeted to those county area codes.

A spokeswoman for the Times said reporters will adopt an increasingly digital focus.

“We are putting more emphasis on digital,” said Nancy Sullivan, Times vice president of communications, in an email.

Also this month, an ad-supported Glendale News-Press mobile application was made available for free download for Apple and Android devices.

The sites are also trying a more contemporary look by adding a Facebook-integrated commenting system.

It’s all in the hope of increasing online readership and grabbing a larger piece of the roughly $231 million that L.A. businesses will spend on online banner ads this year, according to consultancy Borrell Associates Inc. in Williamsburg, Va. 

Gordon Borrell, chief executive at Borrell, said it’s important for newspapers to do things like that to make their digital businesses about more than just showing a copy of their newspaper on the screen.

“(Newspapers) are learning that it’s all about engaging the reader versus having a one-way conversation,” he said.